Brand Life Cycle and Brand Knowledge - Essay Example

Brand positioning requires a lot of thought process about the in-depth cultural & emotional aspects of the customers in the process of introduction, elaboration & fortification of brands that builds an overall "expectation framework" of end customers from the organization as a whole (Park and Jaworski et al. 1986. pp137-139). It requires a lot of strategic thinking a much wider perspective without looking much into the operational aspects. For example, going for an ISO 9001 certification can have one of the benefits of improved branding given that the customers develop better trust in the organization's commitment to the quality of products.

When we talk about products here, it is not specific to a particular product but is pertaining to the organization's overall quality commitment to its products. The products may become obsolete but such impressions last much longer - may die only if the next branding effort has not been made amidst changing market dynamics. For example, if the quality expectations of the consumers are modified to the latest version of ISO 9001 (ISO 9001:2008), the companies certified with the older versions may face brand obsolescence unless they tangibly demonstrate innovations in their internal quality control as per the new standard.

Consumers may immediately realize this differentiating factor once one of the companies starts marketing their compliance with the latest version of the standard. Brand Knowledge and its impact on Retro Products and Brand Life CycleKeller (2003. pp596) presented the key dimensions of brand knowledge as awareness, brand attributes, benefits, images (visualizations), thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and experiences. These dimensions form an important part of consumer memory that impacts their buying behavior.

However, a closer look reveals that all these dimensions are volatile and possess the definitive risk of coming out of the consumer memory if the organization does not practice effective "memory refresh" or "brand reminder" techniques. Banbury & Mitchell (1995. pp178) and Hendricks & Singhal (1997. pp44) emphasized that incremental innovations and regular new product introductions impact the business performance of organizations positively. These can result in the complete refreshing of brand knowledge in the consumer's mind due to their door knocked by the innovative companies periodically to present new innovations & product releases.